As if one plague were not enough, the city is still alive in the distant faubourgs with revolts. Last night, the _rappel_ was beat all over the town, the national guard called to arms, and marched to the _Porte St. Denis_, and the different quarters where the mobs were collected.
Many suppose there is no cholera except such as is produced by poison; and the _Hotel Dieu_, and the other hospitals, are besieged daily by the infuriated mob, who swear vengeance against the government for all the mortality they witness.
I have just returned from a visit to the _Hotel Dieu_--the hospital for the cholera. Impelled by a powerful motive, which it is not now necessary to explain, I had previously made several attempts to gain admission in vain; but yesterday I fell in fortunately with an English physician, who told me I could pass with a doctor's diploma, which he offered to borrow for me of some medical friend. He called by appointment at seven this morning, to accompany me on my visit.
It was like one of our loveliest mornings in June--an inspiriting, sunny, balmy day, all softness and beauty--and we crossed the Tuileries by one of its superb avenues, and kept down the bank of the river to the island. With the errand on which we were bound in our minds, it was impossible not to be struck very forcibly with our own exquisite enjoyment of life. I am sure I never felt my veins fuller of the pleasure of health and motion; and I never saw a day when everything about me seemed better worth living for. The splendid palace of the Louvre, with its long _façade_ of nearly half a mile, lay in the mellowest sunshine on our left; the lively river, covered with boats, and spanned with its magnificent and crowded bridges on our right; the view of the island, with its massive old structures below, and the fine gray towers of the church of _Notre Dame_ rising, dark and gloomy, in the distance, rendered it difficult to realize anything but life and pleasure. That under those very towers, which added so much to the beauty of the scene, there lay a thousand and more of poor wretches dying of a plague, was a thought my mind would not retain a moment.
Half an hour's walk brought us to the _Place Notre Dame_, on one side of which, next this celebrated church, stands the hospital. My friend entered, leaving me to wait till he had found an acquaintance of whom he could borrow a diploma. A hearse was standing at the door of the church, and I went in for a moment. A few mourners, with the appearance of extreme poverty, were kneeling round a coffin at one of the side altars; and a solitary priest, with an attendant boy, was mumbling the prayers for the dead. As I came out, another hearse drove up, with a rough coffin, scantily covered with a pall, and followed by one poor old man. They hurried in, and I strolled around the square. Fifteen or twenty water-carriers were filling their buckets at the fountain opposite, singing and laughing; and at the same moment four different litters crossed toward the hospital, each with its two or three followers, women and children, friends or relatives of the sick, accompanying them to the door, where they parted from them, most probably for ever. The litters were set down a moment before ascending the steps; the crowd pressed around and lifted the coarse curtains; farewells were exchanged, and the sick alone passed in. I did not see any great demonstration of feeling in the particular cases that were before me; but I can conceive, in the almost deadly certainty of this disease, that these hasty partings at the door of the hospital might often be scenes of unsurpassed suffering and distress.